“Except for Lord Maitland, who, I believe, is in the stables,” Annabel said, smiling at Felton in a roguish manner. “Won’t you both join us, unless you too are eager for ham?”

From the moment Tess sat down beside the Earl of Mayne, his black eyes were sparkling with secret messages. He was truly interested in her ability to ride, she realized. He found her ability to control a racehorse intoxicating.

His courtship had taken on another note, a deeper, surer note. He wasn’t talking flummery, but kept telling her casual little details about his stables and his household. He was speaking less as a man experienced in the fine art of dalliance and more as a man genuinely interested in his companion.

He was five hundred times more attractive for his candor. That, combined with his gypsy-eyed beauty, made him a formidable wooer indeed. Yet Tess couldn’t help listening to Annabel chatter to Mr. Felton. Annabel, of course, was a formidable wooer as well. In fact, she should probably just start thinking of Mr. Felton as a brother-in-law from this moment forward.

“My mother had a restless soul,” Mayne said. “She rode like the wind, even sidesaddle. In England, young ladies only ride sidesaddle, Miss Essex. But I know that in Ireland women sometimes ride astride. Forgive my ignorance on the subject of Scottish customs, but have you ever ridden astride?”

“Of course not!” Tess said tartly. She and her sisters hadn’t ridden so for well over a year, and to reveal those occasions required an excess of candor.

Mr. Felton turned suddenly and looked at her. He had beautiful eyes: like those of a curiously intelligent wolf. She blinked, wondering how he knew she, Annabel, and Imogen used to fling themselves on horses and ride astride—but only on their father’s land, where they couldn’t be seen. There was a faint smile in his eyes that called her bluff.

He said nothing, turning back to the track without a comment. She was acutely aware of his broad shoulder. While Mayne’s shoulder occasionally brushed hers as he handed her a program, or pointed to a certain horse, Mr. Felton didn’t touch her at all.

“The downs behind my estate in Yorkshire are exquisite,” Mayne said. “Many times I have ridden there for an hour without seeing a cottage. One feels as if it is Arcadia, a golden place without worldly occupations.” He lifted her hand to his lips, his eyes holding hers. “I should very much like to introduce it to you, Miss Essex. I warrant its beauty will make you forget the moors of Scotland.”

The mute invitation in his eyes was unmistakable. “There is a lovely little apple orchard behind the racetrack that has some resemblance to my own orchard, Miss Essex. May I entice you into a short walk in that direction?”

Tess felt as if some sort of paralysis had seized her mind. Did she wish to accept his proposal? Annabel looked around Felton’s shoulder; she had a gleam in her eye that confirmed Tess’s sense. Mayne was going to offer for her in that orchard. And she should accept. After all, no one else had made a serious proposal, and her sisters must be brought out.

“Actually,” Mr. Felton interrupted, “I was about to beg Miss Essex to allow me the pleasure of escorting her to the track.” He was on his feet again and holding out his hand. “I would like to introduce her to a horse if she has no objection.”

“Miss Essex need not put you to the trouble of introducing her to animals,” Mayne said with a pointed glance at his friend. “I have already asked her to walk with me.”

“Do stay here with us,” Annabel said to Mr. Felton, her voice a stream of honey.

Tess felt a pulse of exasperation. Didn’t their suitors understand that Mr. Felton showed little interest in her as a woman? If they didn’t see it, she did. Mayne had ignored all four of the races that had just occurred, but Felton’s eyes hardly moved from the track, no matter how handsomely Annabel cajoled him. Felton was quite like her father in that. It was a chilling thought.

As she might have expected, Felton gave his friend a genial smile that made it clear he was in no way poaching on Mayne’s territory. “I’ll return Miss Essex safe and sound in a mere two minutes. I am considering adding a horse to my stables, and Miss Essex is a remarkable judge of horseflesh.”

Mayne cocked an eyebrow but obviously recognized that the businesslike tone of his friend’s voice posed no threat to his courtship. From Tess’s point of view, the only thing that differed between Felton’s obsession for horses and her father’s was that Felton showed some signs of valuing her opinion.

Actually, it would be best if Mayne learned that a wife was not one to be herded hither and yon at his command. “I will return in a mere moment,” she said, rising and taking Mr. Felton’s arm. She was rewarded with a smile that transformed a face that tended toward bleakness.

Mayne had smiled at her fifteen hundred times in the past hour. Each smile was a caress, an endearment, a signal of his intentions, of his status as her future husband, in truth. Yet Felton’s smile left her shaken.

But he has no intention of wooing me, Tess reminded herself. As if to prove her point, he walked directly to the track. “What do you think of that horse?”

It was a gray with dappled spots. As they watched, it took a few big, happy strides before the groom on its back pulled him up short so the horse twitched all over, shook just a bit, causing the groom’s knee to pull loose. Tess laughed.

“I thought so too,” he said with satisfaction.

She looked up at him. “I haven’t said a word.”

“You read the horse’s face. I looked at yours.”

There was a stinging moment when their eyes met before she turned away. “I should—”

The gray pranced off, to win, she was quite certain of that.

They returned to the box directly. Mr. Felton didn’t take her arm, or smile at her again, or make any sign in the least that—that—

“May I take you to the orchards?” Mayne asked as soon as they returned, his voice purring with intention.

Tess looked instinctively at Mr. Felton. For once, he didn’t have his opera glasses trained on the track. Instead, he was looking at the two of them, and she knew that he was quite aware of the earl’s intentions—and he had no plan whatsoever to counter them.

Instead, he turned away and sat down next to Annabel, who greeted him with a piece of artful flummery and a chuckle. It seemed to Tess that he turned to her sister with pleasure.

Tess stood up and placed her fingers delicately on the earl’s arm. She could feel the weave under her fingers, a wool so delicate and expensive it felt like satin. “I would be most pleased to walk with you,” she told him, looking through her eyelashes.

She did not look back at Mr. Felton.

They walked a short distance to an apple tree and paused. It was quite as if she were in a play, really.

Mayne picked her an apple; she graciously accepted. He kissed her hand; she looked into his face. He asked her the question; she assented (quietly dropping the apple). He begged permission, and then brushed a kiss on her cheek. She smiled at him, and he kissed her again, this time on the mouth. It was very pleasant.

She tucked her hand back under his arm, and they walked back, future man and wife.

Or rather, earl and future countess.

Chapter 15

T hey were all curled on Tess’s bed, each with her own bedpost to lean upon, Tess and Josie at the head, Imogen and Annabel at the foot. Josie had a book with her, of course, which she was reading by the candle set on Tess’s bedside table.